Although I was sitting in the
driver's seat of the car, my mother, who was sitting in the back seat, was actually
driving the car. She seemed young and vigorous (in her
early middle years) and her hair was still dark. At the
same time as she was driving, she was also folding some clothes.

My brother Chris and my sister were also in the car. Chris (12-13 years old) was sitting next to me in the
front passenger seat. Because he had muscular dystrophy and could
barely move, I was especially concerned whether he was buckled in
well and whether he was comfortable. When I checked him, he
indicated he was doing fine, and that I didn't need to worry.
But I still felt uneasy about him. My sister, who was a young girl,
was sitting out of my sight in the back seat.

We were taking a trip of around
1,600 kilometers from Texas to Ohio, and had already been
traveling all day. I had dozed off and when I awoke, I saw it was almost 7 p.m. I knew I needed
to get busy working on the book of
dreams which I was writing. I
had put myself on a schedule to work on the book every day. But I
was also concerned that my mother might be tired of driving and
that perhaps I should take over for a while. I was noticing that
she seemed to be driving rather erratically. When a police car
suddenly appeared behind us, I thought we were going to be pulled
over; but the police passed us without incident. My mother passed
a slow moving pickup truck, then swerved to miss another pickup
stalled in the passing lane. Her driving wasn't
terrible, but it appeared to me that she was having problems.
However when I suggested that I take over the driving for a
while, she seemed reluctant to let me drive.

As I turned around and talked
with her, I noticed that the back door, on the right side of the
car, wasn't tightly shut. I reached around to the door, opened
it and pulled it shut, but the door still didn't close
completely. I tried to see if anything was stuck in the door. But
first I had to move out of my way a pile of videocassette tapes lying on the back floor.